Innovation and safety in our organisation

When many things are changing in the outside world and different expectations arise regarding accreditation of conformity assessment, as the RvA we must be able to respond to this. The expectations of the client and society have aspects relating to content and to the services. In this chapter we deal with these service aspects and the internal organisation of the RvA. We also briefly look at our commitment in 2018.

The public report for 2016 comprehensively described our progress in the strategic themes which we determined for the coming years:

• human resources;

• operational excellence;

• internal and external harmonisation;

• information and education about the application of accreditation and certification as a tool.

You can find the last two points particularly in chapter 2; the first two are mainly dealt with in this chapter.

Human Resources

Assessment is and remains the core of our work: we establish whether conformity assessment bodies have the required expertise, impartiality and independence. These assessments are carried out by people who are qualified on the basis of competencies. And these competencies go further than rounded-off training courses and/or professional qualifications. Assessment is not only about knowing the standards used for accreditation but also about the capability to apply them in an assessment setting. This capability is also called soft skills. For people who are managing assessment teams as a lead assessor or team manager, these general skills are very important.

Because the RvA covers a wide range of conformity assessment activities, it is obviously desirable that teams have knowledge of all those areas. The technical assessors and/ or specialists in the teams, experts in their field, provide this knowledge. The difference is that the last category can only do his work in the presence of a qualified assessor. We have a pool of approx. six hundred people who are qualified in the areas in which we are active.

In order to have sufficient subject-matter capacity available in all the main areas served by the RvA, it is essential to localise people with specific technical knowledge quickly and effectively and then contract them in order to conduct assessments for the RvA. In the past we could often find such knowledge amongst people who took early retirement. Due to the disappearance of early retirement schemes and the increasing retirement age, this source has practically dried up. However, in its place self-employed professionals have become increasingly available. But this requires a new way of searching. That is why in 2017 we set up a compact recruitment team in the Human Resource Management department. These recruiters are fully focused on looking for possible candidates via our website, LinkedIn and other networks. We then identify and contract the right people. This approach is starting to bear fruit.

In order to support this new approach we developed a separate website in 2017: www.werkenvoorderva.nl, which is also linked to a LinkedIn business page with vacancies for which we are looking for assessors. In the meantime this has been well used. This means that we can respond more quickly to new market demands.

Digitisation And Information Technology

In 2017 the RvA determined the starting points for its further digital development. Apart from keeping the current IT house in order, this means choosing to apply standard software as much as possible, working in the cloud and the setup of a data warehouse whereby data are only recorded once.

We have established that we have to strengthen the IT function in our organisation with someone who keeps our IT architecture up to date and who can help us realise our ‘digi-vision’. The vacancy for this position was filled at the beginning of 2018.

This does not mean that we were not active in 2017. After a private tender we selected the supplier of a software package enabling us to report digitally on assessments. This package also provides a so-called portal. In the future via this portal clients can simply communicate with the assessment team and the office of the RvA, also about the way in which they intend to solve any established findings.

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This will work faster for the client as well as for our office organisation, with a lower likelihood of errors. In the second quarter of 2018 we are going to test this package by working with several clients. During the course of 2018 this digital reporting tool will replace the traditional method of reporting.

In 2018 we will also make a business case for further digitisation projects. In implementing this we will particularly look at how these projects offer an improvement for our clients with regard to subject-matter and services. In this connection we obviously compare every possible improvement with the associated costs and the required manpower.

Data Protection

In 2017 for the first time in our history we had to deal with a data leak. This leak was immediately reported to the Dutch Authority for Personal Data. This related to the still active CCKL website. Several personal e-mail addresses had become accessible to unauthorised people. In so far as can be ascertained, this had not been misused. The procedures at our provider for the website have been tightened up, as well as the internal procedure for handling data leaks. Part of this was having penetration tests carried out. They brought to light some other weak areas which have been remedied in the meantime.

Just like all other Dutch organisations the RvA must have implemented the General Data Protection Regulation into its organisation by the end of May 2018. In 2017 we made an initial inventory and at the beginning of 2018 we gave an assignment for a baseline measurement by a specialist agency.

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Whistleblowers Scheme

In 2017, after discussions with the Works Council and the Board of Supervisors, we implemented a reporting scheme for suspected misconduct or irregularity. Such a scheme is normally called a whistleblowers scheme. This scheme contributes to the feeling of safety of our employees.

Operational Performance

After the arrears in processing times were substantially made up in 2016, we have noticed that this has broadly continued in 2017. A substantiation in figures shows this in detail; see Annex 3 of this public report. We invested a lot of time in 2017 in gaining better access to subject-matter expertise for our assessment teams, the selection and a beginning of the implementation of the new digital reporting tool and the recruitment and training of employees who can act as lead assessors. The latter is particularly important for further harmonisation of assessments, which is much valued by our clients.

Throughout the year we monitor our performances via so-called key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs are determined at the beginning of the year for several areas in which we want to achieve improvement. In 2017 this was successful for most of the issues. We will address several issues in 2018 with extra energy. This particularly applies to the commitment of the permanent RvA employees in assessment teams and to the processing times of complaints, notifications and disputes. These two issues should contribute to our ambition of increasing the score of the client satisfaction survey from 7.3 in 2017 to 8.0 in 2018.

Large Transition Projects

The largest transition project with which we are dealing is transferring about 250 CCKL accredited medical laboratories to accreditation according to ISO 15189. At the end of 2017 we still had to do seventy, the majority of which will transition in 2018. This means the project is well in line with the schedule. But this is not always easy because the increasing number of mergers of hospitals and laborato- ries means the assessments are becoming more complex. On the one hand the concentration of laboratory tests is advantageous to a constantly high quality, on the other hand the more complex organisation of the logistics for instance of samples to be tested and of locations where these samples are taken (for instance where blood is taken), forms a risk to quality and in connection with the treatment of the individual patient.

The other large transition project relates to the conversion of the specific expertise assessments which we carried out for the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment to accreditation assessments on the basis of harmonised standards. That project is also well on its way, certainly where it is easy to connect with the accreditation on the basis of European guidelines. For the areas in which national (commodities or working conditions) legislation is applicable, more effort is required to find a proper formulation of criteria. This project will also be rounded off in 2019.

Changing Organically

In order to serve the client increasingly better ‘via digitalisation’ and also to remain an attractive employer, we decided to re-organise the office set up. We put the emphasis on pooling the account management in the office according to the standard in which our accredited clients are active. At the same time we create a split between the more subject-matter oriented functions and the more process oriented functions. By doing this we want to achieve an unequivocal communication to and treatment of our accreditation subjects. It also becomes easier to arrange adequate replacement in the absence of the personal account manager.

A new staff team under a new manager has been formed, namely the Information & Process Management department. The quality function has been placed with the Strategic and Technical Management team. Thereby all internal audit functions have been placed outside the direct responsibility of the operations.

Outlook For 2018

In 2018 we will pay a lot of attention to the following matters:

• the extension of our Multilateral Agreement (MLA) recognition with ISO/IEC 17034;

• successfully undergoing the peer evaluation by the European co-operation for Accreditation (EA) in January 2018;

• the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation;

• the implementation of the software for the new digital reporting system and the client portal for exchanging corrective measures;

• the composition and the functions of the RvA assessment team of the future;

• the implementation of adjustments in connection with the new ISO/IEC 17011;

• the implementation of the new version of the ISO/IEC 17025;

• the implementation of new functions in the office organisation;

• the organisation of the conference on behalf of the Advisory Panel of Stakeholders at the occasion of the World Accreditation Day; see www.iaf.nu/articles/ World_Accreditation_Day_2018/547.

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